As you know by now, we love food. Buying it, eating it, looking at it, cooking it, the whole shebang. So when we started this trip we were fairly confident we’d always be able to find things to eat. (Spoiler alert: we have.) And we’ve loved trying out local recipes and eating dishes we couldn’t find elsewhere. But the more places we travel, the more we have to expand our notions of what makes a good meal. So far, we’ve been able to make first-day minestrone everywhere, but it’s been different every time. Sometimes the beans are strange, sometimes there aren’t cans of tomatoes, and sometimes we can’t find our go-to veg. So far, though, parmesan has been the main sticking point. Speaking of cheese, and flexibility, today’s post is about the need for improvisational cooking when you are on the road.
When we saw the vegetable market in Cabo Verde, we were a little sad. It was big and noisy and great, but the actual vegetables were varietally challenged, and did not all look very appetising. We get it: island nation + little arable land = many food miles. Still, we love vegetables, so we persisted. And we were rewarded with okra (which works better than you’d expect with rosemary), collard greens, and a wide variety of root vegetables we’ve never cooked with before, like cassava and batata.
One lucky day we happened upon some handsome small eggplants and tomatoes. So we thought we’d make one of our favourite Sicilian dishes, pasta alla Norma. Or, we’d try: we didn’t have either ricotta salata or basil . We substituted a queso from Santo Antaõ and marjoram. No Sicilian would mistake it for the genuine article, but it wasn’t bad; we called it pasta all’abnorma. And it kept us cooking, and eating, which is the goal.
We also learned through painful experience that the dried corn we saw everywhere was not popcorn but dried kernels with the germ removed. Which means it does not pop: it burns. And it is a key ingredient in cachupa. (We threw it into a vegetable soup to thicken it up.)
If you are a regular cook, and especially if you are a lazy one, you’ll know that substitutions are always possible. As with John’s biscuits, which prefer yogurt but turn out fine with milk. We’ve taken that improvisational cooking spirit on the road, trying to find close relatives, or to replicate, if not a taste, then a color or a texture. Purists will hate it, and it can be taken too far: remember Laurel’s Mongolian pizza? (We won’t be making that, ever.) Sometimes it’s smarter not to tempt fate, especially in restaurants. For instance, we avoided the ‘Caprese Cabo Verde’ we saw on menus, featuring that same queso instead of mozzarella. We knew it would only make us sad. On the other hand, we took a chance recently: at our go-to restaurant in Mindelo, John ordered lasagna and Laurel nachos. The first was astonishingly good, the second not bad.
We are learning to eat mostly as the locals do. We take a few risks, and we have a bottle of hot sauce on hand to cover any mistakes. Occasionally, we come up with something brilliant; occasionally it is inedible.
